Is it hard moving to Spain?

Is it hard moving to Spain?

So, is it hard?

Well to put it in to perspective I finished my career in the military and we hit a bit of a bump, you know when you sit there and say 'What now?' and you almost wait for someone to push you in the right direction, well, we were there. Five months later we are sat writing this blog from Spain. But anyway, rewinding back to the start. We started looking at what we were going to do and I think we both wanted to have a change of scenery. We both have an interest in teaching and that is where we came across teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). We both bought an online course and did it in our own time.

We decided that we were going to move in with my family, we both found jobs and for three months we basically worked, ate and slept. We managed to save a steady amount of money to set us up for moving and when the time came we booked a flight arriving in Valencia airport on the 29th of December 2017. The one-way Flight cost us about £70 each but we decided to bring six suitcases between us which brings us to our first piece of advice. If you're sure you will be staying in the same place then bringing a lot of your belongings with you is probably a good idea, but for us we have recently moved to Alicante and lugging six suitcases around wasn't fun at all, especially climbing three flights of stairs to our apartment, especially when Alison isn't strong enough and I had to carry all of them... but we will leave that there. Anyway, we got off the plane in Valencia with our lives crammed into six suitcases and jumped in a taxi to our apartment. We arrived in the city centre to which the taxi driver chucked our bags on the side of the road, took his money and left. At this point we had another one of those moments, we stood on the corner of a block of flats in an area so dense the only sky you could see was directly above you and thought, 'what do we do now?'. We got in our new home for the month, stood on the balcony with the sun on our faces and looked at each other and said 'oh my god is that it, do we live in Spain?' which finally brings us to our answer... Is it hard to move here? Our answer is NO. Moving here is very easy. Pack a bag, book a flight, book an apartment, it really is that simple. It's what you do next that is the hard bit.                                                                                                     

Why did we choose Valencia?

We chose to move to Valencia because you get the best of both. Valencia is the third biggest city in Spain, so you can enjoy the busy city life as you would in Madrid and Barcelona however you will probably find it is a lot cheaper to live than the bigger cities and not to mention that Valencia really is a beautiful city. You have a beach, the city life, plenty of attractions and an amazing laid back culture.

Was it what we expected?

An honest answer to this would be no. I don't know if it's just us but we expected a place like that to have a fair few English speaking Spanish people there but there is actually very little. Luckily I speak enough Spanish to get by and if I didn't it would of been even more of a struggle to get anything done than it already was. If you don't speak any Spanish at all then in our experience it will be a huge struggle to find a job in Valencia, especially if it's bar work or similar. Yes there are hundreds of options to work, for example if you have a trade then it is normal to be self employed and try and get yourself a reputation, but as you can imagine Expats living in Spain would prefer to use other Expats if they need work doing, likewise Spanish people would prefer to use Spanish workers, but anything is possible. Don't get us wrong Valencia is beautiful and we would live there in a heartbeat but it is very difficult to live there if you don't speak Spanish. If you decide Valencia is for you and you think you will make it work then we can guarantee you wouldn't regret it, and we wish you luck.